


Return of the Prodigal

by Meltha



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Diverges from canon, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, fanged foursome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-11
Updated: 2012-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After “Crush,” Spike has a change of heart and goes to L.A. to rejoin his old family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lillianmorgan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lillianmorgan).



> Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
> 
> Author's Note: Written for the Spike What If Ficathon. Lillianmorgan wanted to know what would have happened if Drusilla’s desire to get the family back together again in “Crush” had led to Spike leaving Sunnydale for L.A. and seeking the rest of the family out. She wanted Spike/Drusilla, Spike/Darla, Spike/Angel, or Spike solo, as well as the De Soto, an invitation, and bloody minions, but no rape or main character death and left the rating up to me.

“Poor Spike. So lost. Even I can’t save you now.”

The words floated through the night air, filled with a sense of overwhelming sadness, surrounding him with a feeling of loneliness that was almost incomprehensibly complete as he stared at the closed door to the Summers’s home. The invitation had been revoked. The California evening was cold in spite of the spring, though he knew it had little to do with the weather and everything to do with the dead cold inside him. Dimly, he remembered something Angelus had said years before in an alleyway somewhere in Vienna.

“William, we’ve long lives ahead of us if we’re wise, and short ones if we’re stupid. Might I suggest that if you can’t find a reason to continue living, one that drives you and obsesses you, you drink yourself into a stupor and rid us of your idiocy by lying on the balcony until dawn?”

He had responded with a terse, “How many times do I need to tell you it’s Spike now?” But what Angelus said had a grain of sense in it. Eternity was a bloody damn long time to wander around alone. He’d seen more than a few vampires who had lived so many centuries that everyone they had known, human, vampire, or demon in general, was gone, and they made a pathetic picture of hollow shells with no one and nothing to call their own except an interminable stretch of years that lay before and behind them like a vast gray desert in the night.

Angelus had been wrong about Spike in another sense; Spike had always known what drove him, and even with the eyerolls and put upon sighs of the older two vampires in their demented little family, it had been love. His passion for Drusilla had carried him through decades, keeping him not merely surviving but fully alive, even after the unexplained disappearance of Angelus and their sudden abandonment by Darla. He circled her like a planet around the sun, and she was the center of his world, at least until… until…

Why exactly had they separated? It hit him fully now that the only reason he wasn’t still by his dark princess’s side was because she had foreseen his feelings for the Slayer, and that had made her leave him. To her, it was as though the infidelity had already occurred because time didn’t move in a line for her. And, bending his mind into corkscrews, he had only fallen for the Slayer because Drusilla wasn’t there.

“Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecies,” he muttered, still standing on the steps of the Summers’s porch and feeling deeply stupid.

He turned on his heel and walked with determination back across the lawn, pausing at the tree where he had spent so many nights watching and smoking as the Slayer slept, either alone or with that fool soldier boy. He regarded it critically, the dozens of snuffed cigarette butts lying at its base visible to his keen sight despite the darkness. The sheer number of hours he had spent there was lying before him, each one empty, worthless, discarded, and ready to be swept away by the garbage man or blown to the four winds. It was his very own little temple to the pointless love he’d harbored, complete with useless offerings.

When Buffy would wake in the morning, she would wonder how she had never heard the sound of that tree snapping like a dry twig and falling to the ground, dead as stone.


	2. Chapter 2

It didn’t take Spike long to pack what little he wanted to bring with him: a few albums on vinyl, a handful of books, some cash. There was nothing else he wanted to remember from Sunnydale. He looked for a moment at one of Dawn’s schoolbooks, something she had left there “accidentally” so she would have an excuse to return for it. He ran a finger along the binding for a moment, then left it where it was and closed the door of his crypt with a bang, plunging the past into dead darkness.

He threw the odds and ends into the trunk of the De Soto, long since moved to a rental spot on the other side of Sunnydale, grabbed the keys, and laid tire tracks on Main Street as he bid the city a none-too-fond adieu. Between the Initiative and the Scoobies, he had escaped with very little of his dignity intact, but he was intent on reclaiming the rest of it.

Dru had told him about L.A. Dear old snooty Darla was back, and fun and games were being had at the expense of Angel, ballerina vampire and elegantly brooding poofter. Well, thought Spike, I may be late to the party, but I can make up for lost time. The radio blasted into the night as he topped 100 mph on the road to Los Angeles, the Sex Pistols screaming into the night air, and he screamed along with them, aware that for the first time in what felt like lifetimes he was smiling with genuine anticipation.

He reached Los Angeles an hour before sunrise. The towering buildings of glass reminded him of the time he had spent in so many other big cities, and he realized he missed more than the thrill of the hunt. He missed the pulse of life that surrounded him in the middle of a major city, the constant drumming of heartbeats in his ears, the sense of energy that radiated from the ground and left a feeling of belonging to something much larger than a hick town in the sticks with a demon problem. He breathed in deeply, finding even the filthy scent of car exhaust a kind of ambrosia, and started forming a plan to go out and do something other than mope or drink rotten booze at a teeny-bopper hangout. An opera, a street brawl with real gangs, a dinner of human food in a five-star restaurant or a good old fashioned tour of the red light district, all of them sounded equally wonderful, but first he needed to stake out his territory and find a place to stay for the day.

His instincts were back with him in spades, and in short order he had managed to find a group of Thoruka demons who had holed up in an unused maintenance room for the subway. They were dead almost too quickly for him to enjoy the violence, but he cleaned up the mess and crashed on a relatively comfortable cast-off couch in his new lair, sleeping soundly and without dreaming.

When he awoke the next evening, he found he was no longer alone. Pressed along the back of his leather duster was another form, wrapped tightly around him and pressing him against the back of the couch. An arm possessively gripped his shirt, the long nails digging into the cloth, ripping it and scratching across his chest, leaving marks of red in their wake. For a moment he tensed, ready for a fight, but then a familiar scent met him, and it matched perfectly with the voice he heard.

“They’ve never lied to me before,” Drusilla hummed in his ear, nipping it hungrily with her words. “Never, not even when I begged them to. The stars always told the truth until they said you wouldn’t come back to me. I’m very, very glad they lied.”

“You found me,” he said, stating the obvious.

“Yeah,” she growled, throwing one leg over his hip. It wasn’t until now that he realized she was nude. “I felt you coming for me, and it pulled me to you, like sparks flying up into the night sky. You want me.”

It wasn’t a question, and it didn’t need an answer. He rolled towards her, grabbing her arm and deftly slipping his knee between her legs as he moved.

“It’s been so long, baby,” he breathed against her skin, his teeth already sharp and running over her throat.

“What about that silly little girl?” she said with a pout. “You played with her, didn’t you?”

“Harm?” he said, pulling back a fraction of an inch to look in her eyes. “She was like turning on the telly and watching something inane because there’s nothing else on and nothing better to do. She passed the time. But you,” he moaned as her hands slid under the lapels of his duster, starting to drag it from him, “you’re everything, pet.”

“Light and darkness, the sun and moon, clocks ticking away the minutes and heat slipping into the cold,” she murmured as his head bent to catch her shoulder, biting it softly, “we make it all, don’t we?”

“Too bloody right we do,” he agreed in a harsh pant as her hands drifted to the button of his jeans.

If he’d had a choice, a moldy, mildewed couch in a 1970s-style butterscotch and forest green plaid wouldn’t have been the setting he would have chosen where he’d finally get back his lady love, but at the moment he couldn’t have cared less. They drank from one another as they mated, wild as the lions they had once watched together in the savannahs of Africa, their cries so loud and primal that the subway couldn’t drown them out. Hours passed, eternities passed, lifetimes full of gentle lovemaking and unbounded rutting and everything in between until they were finally completely exhausted and fell into sleep bordering on unconsciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

Spike awoke hours later with Drusilla softly suckling his earlobe, the ghost of unnecessary breath grazing his neck.

“Hello, love,” he said, nuzzling her in return.

“We broke the ugly couch,” she said with a giggle. “It’s all topsy-turvy, and it’s bleeding stuffing all over the floor.”

“Looks like we’ve claimed our first victim since our reunion,” he replied, amused as he took in the destruction they’d wrought without even meaning to.

“First of many,” she promised, her fingers grazing his hair as though to soothe the nerves attached to the chip. “Mummy promises.”

With a sigh he dragged himself up until he was sitting, Drusilla clinging to him as she sat across his lap. A frown crossed his brow. There was no force in hell that could make him leave her again, but the truth was he couldn’t hunt, and she didn’t seem able to accept it. An annoying voice in the back of his mind, one that seemed to speak with an Irish brogue, told him that even at the height of his power he’d had trouble keeping Drusilla perfectly satisfied, particularly when it came to violence. Trouble was ahead, and he knew it even as he was absently stroking his lover’s thigh.

“Spike,” she said plaintively, resting her head on his shoulder, “I’m hungry.”

Well, the problem hadn’t taken long to rear its ugly head.

“Dru,” he said, trying to broach the subject delicately, “I know you don’t believe in science and all that, and maybe for you it would be that way if they’d stuck this blasted bit of technological mumbo-jumbo in your noggin, but the fact of that matter is I can’t hunt.”

Drusilla looked at him appraisingly, or at least he thought she was looking at him. Sometimes it was difficult to tell.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she finally sighed, standing up. “Pretty Spike, you just don’t believe hard enough, do you?”

“Afraid not,” he said. “I’ve heard of mind of matter and all that, but mind over massive migraine is another story.”

She sighed resignedly as she stooped to pick up her gown, an ivory lace and chiffon confection that Spike recognized for what it was after a moment.

“A wedding dress, Dru?” he said, raising an amused eyebrow.

“Ivory is for second weddings,” she said logically. “It was entirely appropriate, and far prettier on me than on that hussy wearing it at city hall. She wanted his money, bags and bags of it. Depraved wanton. Now she’ll rot, but the dress was too pretty to rot with her.”

Spike watched as she drew the dress over her head and smoothed the lacy cap sleeves into place, the skirt’s hem fluttering around her ankles. A bitter part of him knew that her “first wedding” had been to dear old Angelus. There was no competing with him for Dru’s attentions, even with a soul lodged firmly in the old sod. Second place, that was always Spike, but at the moment he’d settle for silver, especially if he got sex this mind-blowingly good.

Drusilla had just toed on her left shoe, which had been sitting in a corner behind a small pile of crumpled newspaper. The other was resting on top of a makeshift table made of packing crates. Spike grabbed it, then sank down to his knees in front of her. Delicately, he slipped it on her foot.

“Just like Cinderella,” he said, looking up at her with unveiled adoration.

She cooed in pleasure, then tipped her head to one side as though she’d just noticed something.

“Spike,” she observed seriously, “you’re still naked.”

“That I am,” he agreed, sitting back on his heels and grinning evilly. “Don’t suppose there’s anything you’d like to take advantage of because of that situation, now is there?”

She blinked innocently, then started to laugh. “Don’t you remember?”

Spike ran through the last several hours in his mind, trying to find out what was so hysterical. Then he realized.

“Oh,” he said, turning around and grabbing what remained of his jeans from the floor. Actually, it was only one half of them.

“Ripped them right in two,” she giggled. “I was a bit impatient.”

“Not that I minded at the time,” he said, a bit embarrassed, “but I don’t exactly have another pair lying about.”

“That’s not good,” she agreed, “and I don’t think you can borrow any of my things. They wouldn’t fit. Well, perhaps the caftan.”

“No, probably not a good idea,” he said, trying not to think of Dru attempting to squeeze him into frills.

“Perhaps Daddy would loan you some trousers,” she said, considering.

“I doubt he’d be up for that,” Spike said, shuddering. “Besides, his arse is a mite bigger than mine.”

“Well, I shall just have to go kill someone suitable. It won’t do to have you running about the streets in nothing but fairy dust. I’ve tried it, and it’s nippy. Also, people tend to stare most rudely,” she said seriously.

“Yeah, I imagine they would at that,” he said, rather angry at the thought of her private charms on display for all and sundry.

“I shall return directly after breakfast with clothes for you, and then we can go see Darla. I want her to see we shall be a happy family again, and then she’ll find some way to help your poor head,” she assured him, but before he could ask what she meant, she had disappeared down the subway tunnel.


	4. Chapter 4

Not an hour later, Drusilla returned with an acceptable pair of blue jeans and a white cotton t-shirt. He tried to assess his feelings as he dressed in the clothes of the man she had just murdered. Spike hadn’t killed in over a year and a half, and even at that night at the Bronze, he’d had a pang of conscience about drinking from the girl Dru had killed for him. Bits of him had learned to like humans, and other bits of him always had. What if this man had been someone who the Slayer would have cared about, or Dawn? What if that’s who Dru had on her list for his first meal once he could hunt again? That galled him somewhat.

“Stop worrying so,” Drusilla said, elegantly perching on the ripped cushions of the couch they had spent the day all but dismantling. She examined the tips of her crimson nails thoughtfully. “His blood is on my hands, not yours. Not yet. Not until you want it to be.” She licked one fingertip and smiled.

Spike shrugged off his gloomy thoughts and dressed quickly. Even underground he could still tell that night had fallen. He was starting to feel cooped up. Ever since the Initiative had captured him, he’d found that his natural tendency to hate feeling confined had gotten even worse. He wasn’t claustrophobic exactly, but his patience with any one place tended to wear thin after a couple of hours.

“So, where have you and Darla been hanging your hats?” he asked as they left the quite trashed lair behind them and meandered through the subway tunnels, holding hands by old habit. He’d quite forgotten how much he missed some of those simple little expressions of contentment, though he firmly denied saying so as there was a limit to how sappy he would permit himself to be.

“With the evil lawyer,” Drusilla replied with a grin.

“In this city, that’d narrow it down to several thousand,” he said with a snort. “Which evil lawyer?”

“Lindsey, the fallen knight of the round table,” she explained. “His silver armor is all tarnished over, and he may fall farther, topple over with a clatter and a clang and a burst of fire from green. Or perhaps not. It’s unwritten yet.”

The one thing Spike centered on in her explanation was the facts Lindsey was a he and that Dru was calling him a knight… a term she usually reserved for himself. He frowned.

“This Lindsey. What’s he like then?” he asked cautiously, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

“A bit peaky, really,” Drusilla said with a sniff. “He sent for me to help Darla turn cold and hard and strong again. Her heart was going pitter pat all out of order, and I made it stop altogether.”

“How did he know where to find you?” he asked.

“Oh, spells and eyes that watch. He knows those who know too much, more than they should. He found me living in Mexico. I was in the pointy place when they came for me and asked me to tea with Grandmum,” she said, kicking delicately at a discarded cigarette package as they went.

“The pointy place?”

“Yeah. Big and made of stones. I could hear the screams from when they ripped their hearts out living and threw them to the crowd, bodies going bump, bump, bump all the way down the stairs,” she said, looking at him from the corner of her eyes with a chilly smile.

“You were living in an Aztec pyramid?” he said, a little stunned.

She nodded demurely. “It was nice. There were big spiders there, and the jaguars sang songs at night. Sometimes I sang with them. The music was like ink on black velvet. But I was lonely after a while.”

The last words had been spoken in something close to a whimper, and he stopped their progress to wrap his arms around her tightly.

“I’m sorry you were lonely, baby. You’re not going to be alone any more though. I promise,” he said, pulling her into an embrace so tight it would have broken a human’s ribs, but Drusilla just giggled.

“Pretty bruises marking Princess,” she said as she laughed. “Promises can shatter like glass, though. Are you quite sure you won’t go away again?”

“You’re mine, Dru. I go where you go, and you’ll have to stake me to get me to leave you again,” he growled in her ear. As a subway car rumbled past, he pressed her flat against the wall of the subway tunnel, the wind from the cars whipping around them as they kissed like wild things.

“Well, unless we want to give the whole of the Department of Public Transportation a free show, we’d better find this Lindsey’s place and see what’s up with Darla,” he said, a bit of regret in his voice.

Drusilla gave him a playful wink as she gestured towards another tunnel. In a few minutes, they had reached a stairway, and from there they went up and out into the night air. It wasn’t the best section of town, but he’d seen far worse. A few bars and restaurants were open, the light from their illuminated signs turning patches of sidewalk blue or green or yellow. The people were, as always, blissfully unaware of the danger right next to them, and he caught himself smiling over the stupidity of humanity. Drusilla threaded a maze of back alleys and blind turns, and as they progressed, the neighborhood became steadily more posh. When they finally reached a tall apartment building with a doorman and highly polished brass decorating the lobby, he figured that this lawyer, whoever he was, was doing pretty well for himself.

“Good evening, Miss Drusilla,” said the doorman, sweeping off his hat and opening the glass doors for her.

“Hello, Lenny,” she said, and went through without any trouble at all. Spike, however, quickly found that he was stuck on the other side of the barrier.

“Oh, that won’t do,” Drusilla cooed. “Lenny, you shall have to invite my Spike in.”

“I’m sorry, Miss, but the rules are very specific on this. Wolfram and Hart has stated I’m not to invite in anyone without the consent of one of the owners,” he said, looking nervous.

She took a step closer to him, not blinking, and Spike leaned against the barrier with amusement. It was always fun to watch her play.

“You live in a little apartment in the back of the building, don’t you, Lenny?” she said, and the moment of widening eyes from the doorman told Spike that he hadn’t told her this bit of information, but as quickly as the look came, it left, replaced by a glassy-eyed tranquility.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And you like me, don’t you, Lenny?” Drusilla said, drawing closer yet.

He nodded.

“I want you to invite my Spike into the building,” she said, still without blinking.

“I invite you in,” he replied in a dead voice.

“Thanks, Lenny,” Spike said, walking through the door with no problems. “Ehm, Dru?”

“Hmm?” she said, still keeping Lenny locked in place with her gaze.

“If you’re planning on killing the doorman, it’s not the most private place,” he said, gesturing towards the traffic outside.

“Oh, I doubt they’d notice, but I’m not going to kill Lenny,” said Dru, turning to look at Spike over her shoulder. “He’s sweet. Besides, Wolfram and Hart will kill him anyway. They must have some fun too, after all. It’s not nice to win all the games at one’s own party.”

“That’s my girl,” he said over his shoulder to the still entranced Lenny. “Always thinking of others.”


	5. Chapter 5

The elevator ride to the fifteenth floor was a bit aggravating to Spike. It was too long to keep his hands off Dru and too quick to do anything especially desirable. When the bell dinged to open at the tenth floor, the doors rolled open to reveal Drusilla primly fixing her lipstick and Spike looking supremely frustrated as an elderly couple joined them. Drusilla slid her gaze towards Spike, grinning wickedly and running her tongue up to her canines. She sniffed the air though, and pulled back with a look of disgust. The couple left unmolested on floor twelve.

“Ben Gay,” she said, sticking her tongue out. “Nasty.”

Spike chuckled as they rode up the last three floors, then they exited into a refined, dimly lit hallway. Drusilla gestured towards the third apartment on the left. She rapped on its door sharply with her knuckles. A moment later the peephole darkened as someone looked into the hallway, then the door opened to reveal a slightly charred Darla staring in disbelief.

“What the hell is he doing here?” she asked Drusilla, completely ignoring the fact Spike was standing right in front of her.

“He came home,” Drusilla said, looking at Spike adoringly.

“Hi ya, Darla,” Spike said, staring at her rudely. “The par-broiled look works for you. Might want to try a bit more sunblock next time, though. Wouldn’t want to get premature wrinkles, would you? Oh, my mistake. Too late.”

“Ha ha,” she deadpanned stepping back from the door. “I forgot what a wonderful comedian you were. Possibly because you’re not.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said, eyeing the luxurious interior. “So can I come in or do we need to wait for the lawyer to show up and do an invite, because I’d really rather not wait in the hallway.”

“I live here, too,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “There’s no barrier anymore.”

“Well, well, keeping company with a mortal, are we, Great-Grandma? Or is it Sis now?” he said, swaggering past her.

“Drusilla, I won’t have that mutilated, helpless, pathetic thing living in my house,” she said, glaring at her. “Get him out.”

With a shockingly quick movement, Drusilla cracked her a slap across the face that sent the other vampire flying onto the couch. Even Spike was stunned.

“You forget yourself,” Drusilla said, primly seating herself on a chair as though nothing had happened. “I am the Mummy now. And both my pretty children will play together nicely or I’ll paint the walls in blood. Not another nasty word about my Spike’s condition unless it’s to tell us how to solve it. Am I clear, Darla, or do I need to repeat the lesson?”

Darla stared up at her, blonde hair in disarray, and looked for a moment like she was going to kill her, but then sagged slightly and nodded in mute agreement.

“There’s a good girl,” Drusilla said with a smile, moving to sit next to her on the couch and running her nails through her hair to smooth it back. “Good dollies get rewards.”

It hadn’t occurred to Spike before, but he suddenly realized Drusilla was the senior head of the family now. Technically, of course, Angel still outranked her, but since he was having nothing to do with any of them, the clan laws declared his princess had been upgraded to a queen. Realizing this meant that Darla, a stickler for the old ways most of the time, was now actually his junior set him giggling, though it turned into a half-strangled moan when he realized Drusilla had stopped combing through Darla’s hair and was instead kissing her lingeringly, her hands cradling the back of her head. Darla had never shown any interest in Drusilla as a lover in the past, but since she was now her sire, the rules had turned on her, and Spike didn’t see Darla putting up a struggle at all.

“See, Spike?” Dru said, looking at him over her shoulder with yellow eyes. “Our games just get better and better. The more the merrier, hmm?”

However, before Spike could reply, the door to the apartment opened to reveal a man in his late twenties carrying two brown paper bags, one smelling strongly of chow mein and the other of ox blood.

“Feeling any better, Darla?” he asked as he set them down on the kitchen counter, and it wasn’t until he’d turned back around that he realized the other two vampires were in the room. “I… wasn’t aware we had company,” he said, staring directly at Spike as though assessing how much of a threat he would be in a fight.

Drusilla got to her feet and curtsied to what must be Lindsey, saying, “May I present William the Bloody, also known as Spike? He’s my sweet knight come home again.”

“Oh, right,” Lindsey said, and while he didn’t take a step backwards, every facet of his posture suggested he was ready for a fight. Whatever else might be true of the scrappy, and rather short, attorney, one thing Spike had to give him credit for: spirit.

“Easy there,” Spike said, getting lazily to his feet and proceeding to nick the bag of Chinese from the counter. “I’m not planning on munching on you. The chow mein smells good though. Any egg rolls in here?”

“Spike’s harmless,” Darla said, but Dru growled in warning, “temporarily, anyway. The Initiative put one of those behavior modification chips in his head.”

“You know about the Initiative?” Spike said to Darla, surprised.

“Of course we do,” Lindsey replied in an accent Spike recognized as Texan, handing Darla the bag from the butcher’s. “Wolfram and Hart owns a large portion of the controlling funds, and our research staff is responsible for several of the technological innovations they used prior to their demise.” He turned abruptly away from Darla and smiled apologetically at Drusilla, saying, “Didn’t realize you’d be back or I would have brought two cartons.”

“That’s alright, dearie,” Drusilla purred, stretching out on the couch next to Darla and laying her head in her lap. “I’ve already eaten tonight.”

“Could we go back to the part where this guy works for the Initiative?” Spike said, staring at the three of them.

“Other way around,” Lindsey stated bluntly. “They worked for us.”

“And what in the name of hell is Wolfram and Hart?” Spike asked, still wary and also disappointed at the lack of plum sauce.

“They’re the nightmares in the closet, the things that creep and crawl and crush, darkness and fear and death and torture and a thousand other delights,” Drusilla said, smiling. “They tasted good, too.”

“So it’s your basic law firm,” Spike said, unimpressed.

“Not exactly,” Lindsey said, taking a seat on the couch rather close to Darla, Spike noted. “They specialize in creating evil. Actually, they pretty much define evil.”

“So it’s your basic law firm,” Spike repeated, shoving the rest of an eggroll in his mouth.

Lindsey snorted. “Yeah. They jammed a chip in your head, huh? Guess that makes you one of our guinea pigs. It start to fry your brain out yet?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, watching him carefully.

“It means that thing is a time bomb. The Initiative crashed and burned almost a year ago. The controlled subjects aren’t supposed to last much longer than that, if I remember the brief on my desk correctly,” Lindsey said smoothly. “You’ve got a problem.”

Drusilla looked at Lindsey a moment, then quickly slammed a fist into his throat, pinning him to the back of the couch.

“Get… it… out,” she said slowly, each word distinct.

“Drusilla, you’re being rude,” Darla said cautiously. “Lindsey is our host.”

“Yeah,” she said over her shoulder, not letting up on the pressure to his throat. “He is. And he knows the rules to the games they played with Spike. The musical chairs have to go backward, and he can make it so.”

Lindsey, meanwhile, was turning a shade of pink that clashed horribly with the couch while making small gasping noises.

“Dru,” Spike said casually, “he needs air to speak.”

“Oh, right. I forgot,” she said meekly and lessened her grip on him.

Lindsey coughed, then managed to squeeze out, “I’d need to check with another department, but it shouldn’t be that big a problem. I’ll have to show how it’s worth Wolfram and Hart’s while, though.”

“You’ll come up with something, clever boy,” Drusilla said, releasing him completely and smiling at him fondly, patting his head. “Families need to be whole and happy.”

Lindsey for his part glanced over at Darla as though seeking confirmation that she agreed with the idea of removing Spike’s chip, and she gave him a quick nod, affirming his mission. Spike noticed the brief tableau between the two of them, and immediately figured out the connection they had. He’d seen Darla use it often enough in the old days. There was a string of mortal men who had been smitten with her, as this Lindsey no doubt was as well, and she’d expertly used them to get what she needed when she couldn’t do it herself. Without exception, they had all been young, handsome, powerful, and quite intelligent except when it came to her. Lindsey definitely fit the bill on all of these it seemed to Spike, who wasn’t entirely immune to how attractive the lawyer was. However, all Darla’s past beaux also shared one other common trait: they all wound up dead very quickly after their usefulness was gone. He didn’t suppose Lindsey would fare any better, but then again, he seemed content enough for the moment. Besides, this was the first real chance at getting his chip out that he’d seen yet.

By this time, Darla had carefully opened the Styrofoam container of blood and was sipping at it delicately. The scent hit him, and he realized he hadn’t fed yet tonight. His stomach growled embarrassingly loudly. Every head in the room swiveled towards him at the sound.

“There’s a tiger in your tum,” Drusilla giggled. “Darla, you shall have to share with Spike.”

He saw rebellion on Darla’s face for a moment, then with a disdainful face she passed the container to him. It was room temperature and lacked any kind of punch, but it was enough to satisfy him for a while. After drinking roughly half, he handed it back to her. Darla looked with disgust at what remained.

“I’ve lost my appetite,” she said silkily, handing it back to him.

“What? You afraid you’re going to get cooties off me, Darla?” he asked with a sneer.

He’d been treated with derision by demons ever since the chip had been implanted, and when he’d started working alongside the Scoobies, thing had gotten even worse as he was branded a traitor to his own kind and a lapdog for the Slayer. At least Darla had always treated him with contempt, so it was an entirely new experience being degraded by her, but he was touchy. Frankly, his ego didn’t need any more deflating.

Meanwhile, Drusilla and Lindsey watched the scene unfold in silence, he with an amused smirk on his face, and she with her lips pursed disapprovingly. Spike was aware of their eyes on him, and the prospect of an audience watching was a little too much. With a practiced whirl of leather, he left the room, heading down a small hallway that must lead to the bath.

Once inside, he shut the door and put both hands on the countertop. He noticed a good-sized collection of make-up, perfume, and the like, all signs that Darla and Drusilla had been in residence for a good while. The mirror reflected the vacant shower behind him, and the cold light from a fashionably minimalist light fixture overhead bathed the room in a clinical glare. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and deliberately. He realized he was still holding the remnants of the blood Lindsey had brought, and he drained the rest of it in a single harsh gulp. Like all animal blood, it lacked any punch, but it was better than trying to live off air.

The door pushed open beside him, and Drusilla entered, closing the door after her. She looked into the vacant mirror as she slipped an arm around Spike. It was almost as though she could see their reflections there, he thought, and with Drusilla he wasn’t about to question that possibility.

“Sulking?” she finally said, turning him towards her.

“Yeah,” he said defiantly. “What of it?”

“Darla’s upset because Daddy won’t play with her the way he used to. Instead he plays with matches. She doesn’t like feeling as though she isn’t the prettiest plaything to him anymore. The Slayer is stamped all over Daddy’s heart, and she thinks it’s blotted hers out,” Drusilla said. “I didn’t much like that feeling either. It makes her frightfully cross. She’s beaten ten minions bloody in the past two days alone.”

“I suppose that would be a blow to her over-stuffed ego,” Spike admitted.

“Be nice,” Drusilla said, snapping her teeth at him.

“She and this Lindsey bloke,” he asked. “Are they an item or what?”

“He has naughty thoughts about her, all naked and writhing in sheets, blonde on black silk and smeared lipstick across her face,” she said conspiratorially in his ear. “But Darla won’t have it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

“And you and her?” he asked, smiling evilly.

“I said I was lonely,” she said. “Darla is soft and sweet and pretty and mine. I made her so. Don’t you think she’s pretty, Spike?”

“Can’t take that away from her,” he agreed. “I prefer my ladies brunette, though.”

She gave him a pleased purr, coming in closer to nip at his chin, ending in sucking it suggestively, her eyelids lowered so her lashes looked like black lace on white linen. It never ceased to amaze him how she could look so innocent and so utterly debauched at the same time, but she managed to pull it off.

“What say we lock the door and let the two of them figure out our next move while we take advantage of the mammoth shower this Lindsey fellow has, hmm?” he suggested. “We both smell a touch too much like subway grit for my taste.”

“That would be terribly rude,” Dru hissed.

“Yup,” he said.

“And you’re still my bad, rude man,” she giggled. “Are you sure you don’t want to ask them to join the fun?”

“Nah,” he said, clicking the lock into place. “For now, I just want my best girl. Maybe another time.”

She grinned at him and started the shower with nearly scalding hot water. It would be long after the water had gone completely cold that they would emerge, skin so pink they looked nearly human, to a look of boredom on Darla’s face and one of minor embarrassment on Lindsey’s.


	6. Chapter 6

“That took longer than I expected. You must be improving, Spike,” Darla said bluntly.

He gave her a look that would freeze the Sahara.

“If all goes well, the chip shouldn’t be a problem by this time tomorrow,” she continued as thought nothing had happened.

“And what’s the catch?” Spike asked. “I know they won’t just yank this thing out for nothing.”

“Wolfram and Hart took Darla and Drusilla off trying to turn Angel evil again. Feel up to the job?” Lindsey said, regarding him critically.

“Driving dear old Angelus off the deep end? I should be paying you for the chance,” he said, plopping himself onto the couch and pulling a squealing Drusilla into his lap with a flourish. “Shouldn’t be a problem at all.”

“Exactly how are you planning to do that?” Darla said, raising an eyebrow archly.

“Easy,” Spike replied. “I’ve got a plan.”

Darla gave him a skeptical glare. “Does it involve fifteen Welsh ponies, an irate mob, and a mineshaft? Because that didn’t work too well last time if I recall correctly.”

“Cut me some slack. That was over a century ago,” he said in annoyance. “You’ve been going about this all wrong from what Dru told me.”

“Oh really?” she said sarcastically. “And just what have I been doing wrong?”

“You’ve been pretty much making Angel’s life a living hell the last few months, right? Driving off his friends, or rather getting him to drive them off, making him disconnect himself from humanity, complicating things for him so much that he doesn’t know up from down and was so crazed he lit the two of you up like bonfires on Guy Fawkes?” he said, leaning across Drusilla to lock his gaze with Darla’s.

“What’s your point?” she asked.

“If I understand this curse right, he needs to be happy to lose his soul. What you’ve done is spend the last several months making him depressed. Do you see a problem here?” he said in a tone that suggested he was speaking to a five year old.

“So what are you going to do? Make him eat Godiva and watch a Disney marathon?” Darla scoffed.

“I like Maleficent,” Drusilla interjected. “Scaly monster with a heart of purple ink.”

“We’ll rent it later,” Spike said. “What made Angelus happiest, Darla?”

“Wild killing sprees and a glass of fine burgundy, maybe a few first-rate cigars, followed by a twelve-hour orgy,” Darla said automatically

“Right,” said Spike, “but what about Angel? What makes him happy?”

Darla’s brow furrowed. “That blonde cheerleader he chose over me.”

“We’re leaving Buffy right out of this,” Spike said. “That way lies massive trouble. But you’re on the right track, Darla. As clichéd as it sounds, the thing that made Angel happy enough to lose his soul last time was love.”

Darla rolled her eyes and looked to Lindsey for sympathy, saying, “Is he about to tell me that the key to getting Angelus back is taking him out to a nice Italian restaurant, having a violinist play the theme from Somewhere in Time, and making out in the back of a horse-drawn carriage? Because if he is, you’re going to need a mop to clean up the blood I just drank.”

“I said love, Darla, not sap,” Spike countered. “There’s a hell of a difference.”

“Are we going to give Daddy a penny that will bring him back to the 1970s?” Drusilla asked, confused.

“No, baby,” Spike said, squeezing her as she sat on his knee. “What we are going to give him, though, is a trip down Memory Lane.”

A smile slowly grew on Drusilla’s face. “I can see your plan in my head. I knew my Spike would come up with something.”

“I always get my best ideas in the shower, luv. You know that,” Spike said with a wink.

“Care to let the rest of us in on what you’re planning?” Darla said, obviously annoyed. “Not all of us are psychic, you know.”

“First things first. Get this chip out of my head, and then we’ll worry about Angel,” Spike said, gathering Drusilla up in his arms and carrying her towards what he assumed had to be Lindsey’s bedroom. “You don’t mind if we take your bed for the night, do you Lindsey? Oh, wait. I don’t much care if you mind. See you tomorrow.”

As he kicked the door shut behind him, he heard Darla sigh and say, “Can you believe I put up with him for twenty years?”


	7. Chapter 7

After a few hours of sleep, preceeded by several hours of enthusiastic shagging, Spike awoke with a Christmas morning level of anticipation. If all went well, by the end of the day he would be back to himself, no longer needing to fear humans but in a position to make them fear him. He put his hands behind his head and took a deep, deliberate breath, relaxing completely in a way he hadn’t felt possible for months. Drusilla was still sound asleep beside him, and he carefully crept out of bed so as not to wake her. It was insanely early for a vampire, not even noon yet. She rolled over, still sleeping, into the hollow in the blankets that he had left, murmuring contendly.

Spike walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. He stared into it in the same way all men seemed to: as though the secrets of the universe were stashed somewhere behind the cabbage if only he kept looking hard enough. After several minutes of intense study followed by a quick perusal of every drawer, he found a packet of refrigerated pig’s blood, half a loaf of Italian bread, and some chocolate pudding. The concotion he made from it looked as vile as possible, but after slapping it in the microwave on high until it bubbled, he took it out to the living room, plopped down on the couch, turned on the TV, and ate the contents with a large serving spoon.

“What are you doing?” Darla said in a revolted voice as she walked into the room, distubed by the noise and unable to sleep.

“Eating breakfast. Most important meal of the day, you know,” he said without taking his eyes off the replay of a football match on BBC.

She sniffed experimentally, and screwing her face into a look of supreme disgust, said, “Yes, I can smell that. I mean is there any particular reason you’re eating that concoction on Lindsey’s couch naked?”

“Not really, no,” Spike said, continuing to shovel the blood-chocolate hot sandwich into his mouth.

Darla sighed.

“You’ve been doing that a lot,” Spike added as the ball swept past the goal. “It’s a mite annoying.”

“When Drusilla went off into the night to bring you back, I was hoping she’d either get bored, or more likely confused, and show up without you, or else maybe she’d just not come back at all,” Darla said. “But, no, this just follows my luck lately.”

“Luck’s been that good to you, eh?” Spike said, finally sparing her a sideways glance.

In spite of herself, she half-smiled at him, and then actually let out a little laugh. “Maybe. A couple months ago I was dying of syphillis. Now, suddenly, I’m immortal and saddled with a sire who has tea parties three times a day and a brother whose hair is the color of a nuclear melt-down, and there’s an infinitessimal chance Angelus might come back to play.”

“You forgot the bit about the lawyer with the Texan drawl and the biceps to die for who’d be your sex slave at the blink of one of you eyes,” he added, grinning openly.

“True,” she said, perching on one of the arms of the couch. “I suppose my luck could be worse.”

“Could be,” he said as the final seconds ticked away on the game clock. “We might be one, big, happy, severely dysfunctional family again by the end of the day. How does that thought strike you?”

She looked at him appraisingly, taking in the view, before letting a smile curl the corners of her lips evilly. “It strikes me as pretty damn hot.”

Spike returned the smile with one of his own, and from the way his gaze was moving, Darla might as well have been wearing as little as he was. “I loathe you, you know,” he added conversationally.

“The feeling is mutual,” she said.

“I’m glad we got that straight,” he said before standing up and slowly backing her into the kitchen, eyes locked. “I thought you said I was harmless. You seem worried.”

“The only thing I’m worried about,” she spat out as she hauled herself onto the kitchen counter, “is that you’re moving too slow. Lindsey said we need to leave in twenty minutes.”

“I’ve always been one to accommodate a lady,” he said as he reached behind her and promptly ripped her dress in two. “I don’t see any ladies about, though, so I may as well shag you instead.”

Fifteen minutes later, Lindsey, dressed in a gray business suit and carrying a leather attache case, walked into the kitchen. Ten seconds after that, he walked back out again, blinking dazedly.

“I didn’t even know I had any whipped cream,” he mumbled to himself as he went to the bedroom and knocked to wake Drusilla.

Only a few minutes late for their appointment, the four of them arrived at one of Wolfram and Hart’s medical centers and were immediately ushered into a small examination room. It resembled every other doctor’s office in the world, it seemed, including the mandatory stainless steel sink, the plastic receptacle for used needles, and a garishly colored print on the wall that seemed to depict either an Impressionist garden or possibly a section of hell. Considering the clientele, Spike was prepared to assume it was the latter.

It wasn’t long before a doctor knocked briskly once on the door, then entered without waiting for permission. He was about five foot one, had a receeding hairline, and dandruff was visible in the dark hair that still remained. The only thing unusual about him was his eyes: they were orange.

“Which one of you has the behavior modification chip?” he asked in a crisp accent none of them could place.

Three of the room’s occupants pointed towards Spike as he raised his hand. The doctor nodded, then took an instrument out of his pocket, fitted it with a plastic attachment, and proceeded to pop it into Spike’s right ear.

“Not this one, then,” he said. “Usually they put it on the dominant side. Are you right handed?”

“No, left,” Spike said.

“Nice to see they didn’t misplace it,” he said, then circled around to the Spike’s other side and repeated the procedure. “Ah, yes, I can see it.”

“It’s in my ear?” Spike asked.

“Not precisely. They bored a hole from the ear canal through the skull and into the brain. It should only take a minute to remove. Simply take a deep breath, hold it, and get ready to scream,” the doctor said in a monotone.

Before Spike could ask what exactly that meant, he was aware of a mind-searing pain ripping through his skull like one of his chip-induced migraines times a thousand. Just as he was seeing little white dots coloring the edges of his vision, warning him he was about to pass out, the pain abruptly stopped. So did a sound that Spike had mistaken for an air raid siren, but which had in fact been his own screaming. With a soft popping noise, the instrument came out of his ear, taking a small microchip with it.

“That’s it?” he said, mesmerized by how tiny the piece of metal was that had caused him so much pain.

“Except for the bill, yes. I take it Wolfram and Hart will be paying via the usual methods?” the doctor asked.

“You’ll find the required amount in your Swiss bank account by mid-afternoon,” Lindsey answered.

The doctor gave them a parting nod and left as abruptly as he had entered.

“Ow,” Spike said, still dazed.

“That looked like fun,” Drusilla giggled. “Can you do it again?”

Spike swiveled his head towards her and perhaps for the first time in his life said “no” to Drusilla.

By the time the four of them returned to Lindsey’s apartment, the sun was beginning to set. Drusilla was singing to herself under her breath as the last rays dipped towards the Pacific Ocean, and even Darla seemed in a merrier mood than usual. The three vampires held a brief council in the living room that Lindsey eavesdropped on, and within minutes, they had agreed upon their plan.

“I’m still not sure this is going to work,” Darla said.

“Mmmm, even if it doesn’t, we’ll be no worse off than we are now, and it sounds like such a pretty party,” Drusilla said as she applied put the finishing touches on her lipstick. “Spike’s plan sounds reasonable.”

“I don’t know whether I’m more worried that the plan is Spike’s or that you think it’s reasonable,” Darla muttered.

“Shut it, Darla,” Spike said, though it didn’t sound particularly harsh. “Just point us towards this Hyperion place and prepare to have Angelus back by sunrise.”


	8. Chapter 8

The Hyperion wasn’t far from Lindsey’s home, and the three vampires cut a dramatic figure striding along L.A.’s sidewalks. Power seemed to radiate from them, keeping others at a distance in spite of the oddly seductive beauty they possessed. When at last they came to the apparently abandoned hotel, there was a sense of optimism coming from them, even from Darla despite her earlier pessimism. Angel was not in the building when they arrived, just as they had planned. They moved towards his bedroom with the speed of shadows and prepared everything exactly so for his homecoming.

Since Angel didn’t seem to see a need for a clock in his room, there was no certain way of telling how long they waited for him in silence, but the stars outside had moved visibly. Finally, the sound of his footsteps on the stairs echoed through the main lobby, and soon he was in the hallway. He neglected to turn the light on, his night vision more than clear enough to see by and no humans present to need the extra help from electricity. When he entered the room, his mood was already plain from his wilted posture and his tired face.

“Getting sloppy in your old age, mate,” Spike said, stepping from behind him.

Angel tensed immediately, prepared for a fight, but when Spike did nothing more than light a cigarette, he merely looked bored.

“Get out, Spike. I don’t have a quarrel with you anymore,” he said.

“Oh, you mean because I have a chip in my head you don’t have to be the gallant rescuer of fair maidens and kitty cats,” Spike said, coming closer. “Guess what, Angel. The chip is gone.”

“You’re lying,” Angel said, slightly uncertainly. “I don’t smell human blood on you.”

“That’s because I haven’t had any yet,” Spike answered. “I haven’t decided yet exactly what I’m going to do about that. Maybe I’ll only feed off the scum of the earth, or maybe just the humans who annoy me. On the other hand, I might treat the whole human race as one big smorgasbord. It’s nice to have my options open, though.”

“Why are you even here?” Angel asked angrily. “I have enough to deal with without you showing up.”

“Do you mean us?” Darla said, stepping out of the shadows at the same time as Drusilla. “Are we causing you any trouble? I could have sworn you were the one who set us on fire, not the other way around.”

Angel opened his mouth to respond, but Spike cut him off, saying, “Let me see if I have this straight, Angel. Your little human friends have abandoned you, your girlfriend is off limits permanently, you rarely speak to anyone anymore except to demand information, and you didn’t raise a finger to help a room full of people who were munched on by these ladies. Angel, you’re not just gray anymore. You’re only a shade lighter than pure black.”

“You know, you’re starting to annoy me. Can’t we just fight to the death and be done with it already? There’s three of you. You’ll probably win,” Angel said.

“No,” Drusilla said quietly, then came closer to him, so close she was within arm’s reach. “I didn’t like your trying to burn us up. It hurt.”

“That was kind of the point,” Angel said caustically. “You managed to survive, though, so why complain.”

Drusilla shook her head. “No, my Angel. Skin roasting and toasting and peeling and blistering hurts, oh yes. But not like the other hurt, the bad one. I still love you. It hurts that you don’t love me.”

Angel looked at her for a long moment as tears started to glisten in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Dru. I know I made you what you are, and it’s not your fault, but I don’t love you.”

“Really?” Spike asked, tightening the circle that was beginning to form around Angel. “You don’t think back on the nights the two of you had, the blindly perfect mayhem with no moral claptrap yakkety-yakking in the back of your brain about how you needed to go flog yourself? You don’t remember the old cottage in the Black Forest that the four of us had? Or the year the two of us spent haunting that Greek temple?”

“That was obscene, Spike,” Angel said, but his brow was sweating. “The lives we took…”

“I’m not talking about the killing, Angel,” Spike said, coming closer still. “I’m talking about us. I’m talking about what you felt.”

Darla came the closest of them all, standing directly in front of Angel and reaching up to run a hand over his face soothingly. “My sweet boy, I want you back. I spent over a hundred years with you, I left the Master for you, I put up with your crazy childe and the idiot she turned because of you,” she paused to look over her shoulder at the other two, “no offense meant.”

“None taken,” Drusilla said warmly with a smile, but Spike gave her a dirty look.

“When all the humans you know now have turned to dust, and their children, and their children’s children, we’ll still be here, and we’ll still want you,” Darla finished.

“I’ve missed you, Daddy,” Drusilla whispered, resting her head on his shoulder, “so much.”

“And I’ve… ah, bugger it, yeah, I admit I still dream about you,” Spike said. “Not that I like it, mind you. I don’t like that I love you, but I do anyway.”

“Come back to us,” Drusilla pleaded. “Please, my Angel?”

Almost imperceptibly, they were dragging him towards the king-size bed that dominated one wall. Spike almost destroyed the moment by laughing; if the lunkhead thought he had to be abstinent to keep his bloody soul, why did he have a bed big enough for Hugh Heffner? A glance at Angel’s face, though, sobered him at once.

“Angel,” Darla said, her voice almost questioning. “We need you. Don’t leave us again.”

Drusilla said nothing, but kissed the palms of his hands softly, nuzzling at his wrists and looking up at him with adoration in her eyes.

“Face it, Angel,” Spike said, “none of us have ever seriously tried to kill you…”

“What about that time with the Judge?” Angel broke in.

“Okay, there was that,” Spike said, “but that wasn’t really going the way I wanted it to, and do you have to bring up ancient history at a time like this?”

“Last year you skewered me with red hot pokers,” Angel said, pulling back a bit more.

“No, last year I had someone else skewer you with red hot pokers,” Spike corrected him, “and as I recall, Angelus did that to me more than a time or two and called it foreplay.”

“But, wait, that time with Acathla…” Angel said, squinting.

“Alright! Bloody hell, Angel, if it makes you feel better, I’ve tried to kill you! I should point out, though, that you’ve tried to kill me as many times if not more, and stole my girl while I was paralyzed from the waist down, and I was also not the one who walked out the front door because I was having a crisis of conscience and decided to pretend the rest of my family had ceased to exist!” Spike yelled. “I am trying to seduce you here! Will you shut up, get on the damn bed and strip already so the three of us can shag you until we convince you that blood is thicker than souls or some other such rot!”

Darla and Drusilla exchanged a glance.

“He’s your childe,” Darla said. “Don’t look at me.”

Angel stared at him.

“Okay, we all know patience isn’t my strong suit,” Spike said, embarrassed. “But for hell’s sake, Angel, what does it take to make you happy?!”

“Boy, you never change, you know that?” Angel said, and oddly, a smile started to spread on his face.

“Don’t reckon I do at that,” Spike agreed, “and Drusilla is as nutty and difficult as she ever was, and Darla is as vain and egotistical as she was a century ago, and yes, I’m still a head-strong, over-wrought, sentimental poet with the attention span of a toddler who’s drunk a bottle of Jolt and has a constant need for supervision. We’re the same as ever, Angel. Don’t you miss that?”

Angel took in the three of them standing there, looking at him, saying nothing, but at least he wasn’t backing away. After a long pause, he finally spoke.

“I do miss you,” he admitted. “But I can’t…”

“Why the hell not?!” Spike shouted.

“People need me here,” Angel began again.

“What people? Where? The humans have cleared out, and you’re the one that did the clearing! When was the last time you tried saving one of your beloved hopeless? The Slayer and her chums don’t even mention you because they’re too wrapped up in their own lives. What do you have to lose?” Spike asked.

“My soul,” he responded automatically.

“I knew this wasn’t going to work,” Darla said, sitting down on the bed with a pout. “I should have come here on my own. I used to seduce people professionally. There wouldn’t have been a problem.”

Drusilla, though, was biting her lip and looking unhappily between Spike and Angel.

“You left us a long time ago,” Drusilla said, and the sentence was so shockingly rational for her that everyone paid attention. “It hurt. I don’t like to hurt, at least not that way. I want you to answer a question for me.”

“Okay,” Angel said, “what is it?”

“Do you still love us at all? Even a little bit?” she asked softly.

Spike felt his heart breaking for her. Of all of them, she was the one who probably did care about Angel the most, and she was the one least capable of dealing with his rejection. She’d been fool enough to ask the question that could easily end everything, the one they’d tried carefully to avoid.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I do, more than I want to, but that doesn’t mean…”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Spike said, and figuring enough time had been wasted on words, grabbed Angel’s head and began to kiss him as thoroughly as he knew how, which was extremely thoroughly.

Angel put up a good fight for all of six seconds. Darla clocked him, and had to admit she was relatively impressed with his powers of self-denial, all things considered. At the seven second mark, she distinctly heard a muffled “screw this” from Angel, immediately followed by his hands blindly clutching everything within reach. At one point it appeared he was about to drag a free-standing lamp into bed. As it was, a mixture of silk, leather, lace, cotton, denim, and polyester (though no one would own up to having worn it later) tumbled onto the floor. Thunder crashed as a storm broke outside, ominously illuminating the city with forked flashes of lightning. However, nobody particularly cared.


	9. Chapter 9

When Spike woke up the following evening, Darla’s foot was in his face. He recognized the red nail polish. He stared at it in confusion for a moment, then remembered the previous night and began to laugh, annoying everyone else in the bed by waking them far too early. As Angel groaned loudly, the other three vampires glanced at one another, intensely curious.

“So… what’s the verdict?” Spike asked.

Angel yawned, attempted getting out of bed, and tripped over Drusilla in the process. The result was a loud crash and a plethora of curses in various languages, not all of them human.

“Angel!” Darla finally fairly screamed. “Are you evil or not!”

He attempted blinking away the early evening bleariness from his eyes, yawned again, and then said, “Did I wake up screaming blue murder last night?”

“No,” Spike said cautiously.

“Then I still have a soul,” Angel said.

Darla’s face fell. “You’ve got to be kidding me! There was nothing about last night anything less than perfect!”

“Not completely perfect,” Angel told her.

“Did you suddenly turn gay?” Darla asked, dead serious and deeply puzzled. “Even if you did, that still should have worked.”

“Would you mind defining ‘completely perfect’ then,” Spike said in exasperation, “because something is obviously missing in our understanding of the term.”

“I’d say ‘completely perfect’ would include getting out of this dump, telling the Powers That Be they can get a knew lackey, blowing up Wolfram and Hart’s headquarters, killing a couple of Las Vegas gangsters, and taking over their penthouse for a few weeks,” Angel said, pulling on a pair of black pants. “Anybody else feel like turning this into a completely perfect night?”

Spike blinked. Darla blinked. Drusilla blinked. The nearly ravaged lamp’s bulb dimmed for a moment then went back on.

“So… you’re evil?” Spike asked.

“Not exactly. I still have my soul; I can feel it. I still have guilt, and I’m not going to wander around killing innocents and trying to bring on the end of the world. But I’m through denying that I’m a vampire. Darla, as I understand it, I’m now the head of this clan,” he said.

“Technically, yes,” Darla agreed.

“Fine. We’re playing by my rules from here on in. No more pointless slaughters. We feed on the worst of the worst, and that’s it. I’m not launching any more crusades on behalf of the helpless, though. The helpless can go help themselves,” he said, throwing on the rest of his clothes. “I’m through with being fate’s favorite punching bag.”

The three soulless occupants of the room appeared to be considering this.

“I think I can deal with that,” Spike said slowly.

Drusilla nodded in agreement almost immediately. Darla looked deeply preturbed, but eventually nodded in assent as well.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

A few days later, Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn arrived at the Hyperion to investigate whether Angel had anything to do with the sudden destruction of Wolfram and Hart. They found nothing there. Angel’s clothes were gone, his car was missing, and the hotel had the empty feeling a place gets after being unoccupied for a while. On the check-in desk, though, was a note. It read simply “I’ve gone home. Don’t bother looking.” They never did, and that was perhaps the greatest difference between Angel’s human friends and his demon family.

As Angel’s car sped through the Las Vegas night, Spike and Drusilla sat in the back seat. He languidly played with her hair as she hummed to herself.

“Happy now, pet?” he asked.

She giggled before saying contentedly, “The king and the queen and the princess and the knight all lived happily ever after.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Spike agreed and smiled, feeling better than he had in a very long time.


End file.
